After a 10-hour flight from Amsterdam to Portland this week, Frank van Wezel and his son Ed did what came naturally: They went on a shopping spree.
The father-and-son duo wanted to check out how retailers were presenting Hi-Tec brand footwear on the shelves. The visits were a jet lag-fighting lesson for patriarch Frank, the company's founder, and Ed, Hi-Tec's chief executive. The rapid-fire visits on Monday also served as a prelude to their participation in the annual Hi-Tec Sports USA sales meeting for the footwear brand, which has the bulk of its North American operation based in Tigard.
"We're never satisfied," Ed van Wezel said of the presentation of Hi-Tec by the five retailers they visited with Portland-area stores, including Cabela's, REI, Sports Authority, Big 5 Sporting Goods and DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse).
Hi-Tec, an outdoor footwear brand better known in its home territory of Europe than in the United States. At the sales meeting in Portland this week, the company reviewed its footwear styles for next year, among other things.
Ed van Wezel said the product offerings, while staying true to a company core of rugged hi-top and low-top boots, has included some styles intended to serve a growing trend of outdoor apparel as fashion statements.
"Now we're seeing the fashionistas are wanting a piece of the outdoors industry," Ed van Wezel said. "Where you see $300 Red Wing Boots, plaid shirts - that's the outdoors of today.
"And it is very much a casualized lifestyle element, which further makes outdoors a bigger outdoor opportunity, clearly, than it was when it was just climbing to the top of a mountain."
But Hi-Tec might have missed the boat on the last fashion trend, admitted Frank van Wezel, noting the company didn't offer any footwear three or four years ago that could have been classified as "minimalist."
"I made a conscious decision that minimalist was not for us," Frank van Wezel said. "I thought it would not work. People would be found out much more quickly.
But the elder van Wezel said the trend proved to be lucrative for some brands.
"We weren't at the table partaking because we missed it," he said. But he also noted the trend appears to be already played out. "Now it's going back to chunky, to maximal."
Hi-Tec moved the most of its North American operation from California's Bay Area to Portland four years ago. Some administrative employees as well as its Magnum footwear brand, which serves law enforcement and public safety, are based in Modesto, California.
The company has 480 employees globally with $250 million in wholesale sales last year.
Hi-Tec Sports USA has 22 employees in Portland these days. The company moved two weeks ago from an office near Powell's City of Books to a Tigard business park at 7632 S.W. Durham Rd, No. 305, about 1.5 miles south of Gerber knives' factory. Ed van Wezel said the company, which originally had 4 employees in Portland, had simply outgrown its downtown space. While the previous space was 7,300-square-feet, a company spokesperson said the 9,000 square feet in the new location is designed in a more usable configuration.
Hi-Tec is the 12th-leading wholesaler of outdoor footwear in the United States, according to SportsOneSource data that Hi-Tec provided. Last year's U.S. sales were 39 percent higher than the previous year, Ed van Wezel said.
"The U.S. business is growing well," Ed van Wezel said. "Since we moved to Portland we've changed the management, we invested in people with a better skill set. So really it's going to plan."
--Allan Brettman
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